Cloudflare, even the free tier, improves my site speed and security – so much so that I use it for all my sites. The default settings boost site speed by global distributed caching of static content. Static content, by Cloudflare’s definition, excludes HTML. This makes sense for dynamic sites with frequent new posts and user comments. For my sites like this one, that have less frequent new posts and do not allow user comments or other dynamic content, I can dramatically increase site speed using a page rule.
Rambling thoughts about WordPress
Site speed
403 Text String
If my site gets attacked, it could serve up a lot of 403-Forbidden error pages, which would use a lot of resources, slowing my site or even bringing it down. For 404-Not Found errors, I want to serve a friendly helpful page that fits in with the look and feel of my site. Legitimate visitors should rarely if ever encounter a 403-Forbidden error though, so I prefer to politely limit resource use to the extent practical. My solution is a custom 403 text string, using the following line at the beginning of my .htaccess file:
ErrorDocument 403 "403: Sorry, not permitted."
